


Boss of Me

by ThePreciousHeart



Category: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Romance, Songfic, slight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-19
Updated: 2013-08-19
Packaged: 2017-12-24 01:45:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/933697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePreciousHeart/pseuds/ThePreciousHeart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takes place during Life, the Universe and Everything. Zaphod is depressed and Trillian almost leaves him, before he makes it up to her. Lyrics are from "Boss of Me" by David Bowie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Boss of Me

_Tell me when you’re sad_

_I want to make it cool again_

_I know you’re feeling bad_

_Tell me when you’re cool again._

The majestic, frozen beauty of Allosimanius Syneca lay stretched out before the low-orbiting _Heart of Gold_ like an unexpected and rather tempting offering. Inside the _Heart of Gold,_ Trillian sat with her legs crossed, sighing and idly flipping her way through the virtual Guide with no fixed entry to read in mind. The gorgeous land below her was relaxing enough to look at, but though her body had calmed in response to the sight, Trillian’s mind was still beset with worries involving the second passenger of the _Heart of Gold,_ Zaphod Beeblebrox, her boyfriend and the ex-President of the Galaxy. For days he had been stomping around the starship in a depressed funk, and now he refused to leave his cabin on the ship. It was more for his sake than hers that Trillian had arrived here, although she appreciated the soothing icy landscape, which ever so vaguely reminded her of the pictures of Antarctica that she had seen back on Earth.

       As the blisteringly white day slowly transformed itself into a freezing night, Trillian figured that she’d better go check up on Zaphod. She got to her feet, ignoring the small voice inside her head that told her that Zaphod probably didn’t want to see anybody. Trillian had come here for him, and she was bound and determined to at least show him the scenery, even if he was in no state to admire it.

       At the doorway to Zaphod’s cabin, Trillian paused for a moment, wondering if she should knock before entering, before finally decided to hell with it and barging right in. To no one’s surprise, Zaphod was lying in bed with all the lights shut off except one solitary lamp by his left side, illuminating a book of crossword puzzles. Zaphod’s right-side head was buried beneath a pillow- to avoid catching a glimpse of the other one, Trillian assumed- and his left-side head was tiresomely bent over the crossword, filling in letters with a mild air of ennui. He didn’t look up when the door opened, or when Trillian cleared her throat loudly enough to catch his attention.

       For good measure, she cleared it again.

       “What’s the matter?” was all he said. “Got something stuck in there?”

       “I was hoping,” Trillian said quietly, “that you would come out to look at the landscape of the planet we’re flying above. Allosimanius Syneca. It’s very beautiful.”

         Zaphod paused in mindlessly filling in letters and mindlessly gazed up at Trillian instead. He disliked what he saw.

       _Life has your mind and soul_

_It spins on your hips._

Trillian looked so vital, so warm and inviting, that for once it actually disgusted Zaphod. He wished she would go away and leave him alone, instead of trying to persuade him to come out of his room and do fun and exciting things. Zaphod was not in the mood for fun and exciting things, and he didn’t see why anyone else had the right to feel differently.

       “I don’t care where the bloody hell we are, baby,” Zaphod told Trillian sharply. “I’m not feeling it. Go away.” He sank back down over his crossword puzzle, hating her for caring when he wasn’t in the mood to care about her.

         Trillian dared to stand in the doorway a second longer, just to see if Zaphod would show any signs of changing his mind, and when there appeared to be no such signs, she tried her best not to slam the door and walked off down the corridor, breathing deeply in and out. As she walked, she began to count the seconds it would take for Zaphod to leave cabin and hoped that she wouldn’t have to reach her numerical namesake before such an event took place.

         _We fly through the night_

_The tears on your lips_

The following morning, Trillian was depressingly still in the thousands as she watched the sun rise. Zaphod had made no sign during the night of wanting to leave the cabin that he was holed up in, and Trillian realized with a snap that this wasn’t going to work. By this point she no longer cared whether or not Zaphod got out of bed, as long as he was still communicating with her. Trillian stopped counting the seconds and sat down at the _Heart of Gold’s_ computer, flying out of the atmosphere of Allosimanius Syneca and leaving it behind.

       For Trillian’s next move, she didn’t feel the need to consult the Guide. In her mind, there was one surefire way of bringing Zaphod back to her, and that was to cook him a delicious meal as if she were his housewife. The process of cooking got off to a slow start, until Trillian disabled the kitchen’s synthomatics and immediately had a much better and easier time of it. She lovingly prepared a meal that would tickle Zaphod’s fancy- it was tempting enough to her, anyway- and took it down to Zaphod’s cabin, remembering to knock on the door this time. After getting no response, Trillian wrenched open the door as patiently as she could and stepped through, holding her tray with Zaphod’s meal on it out like a peace offering.

         “I was wondering,” she said, directing her words to the disheveled Zaphod who lay tangled up in sheets on the bed, “if you would like to talk things through.”

         Zaphod, irritated that someone would have the gall to disturb his not-sleeping, said the very first thing that came to mind. “Zark off.”

         He pushed himself up the slightest bit to see what Trillian thought of that, and even in the dim light from the outside corridor noticed a change in her countenance. For a moment she looked as if she were about to nod patiently, but then Zaphod noticed a tear breaking its way from Trillian’s composed façade. Within seconds she had turned her back on Zaphod and walked away from him, lightly casting the tray in her hands aside as she did so.

         For the first time in weeks, Zaphod was interested in something other than his miserable self. He stared at the tray lying on the floor outside of his cabin, and observed delicious smells wafting up from it. Struggling out of the bedclothes’ swaddling, binding embrace, Zaphod made his lurching way over to the doorway and stood dumbstruck at the sight of Trillian’s lovingly-prepared, delicious meal, tossed not-so-lightly enough that the plate and glass had shattered.

       As Zaphod stood there staring, and Trillian’s back retreated into the distance, it suddenly dawned on him what exactly Trillian was going off to do, and exactly how much he didn’t want her to do that just then.

         He took off towards the transport room.

         Trillian despised the fact that she was crying as she entered the transport room. It was Zaphod’s loss, not hers. She tried to tell herself that as the tears settled on her lips, tingeing them with a salty flavor, and her hand hovered over the button that would take her away for good. Suddenly Trillian became aware of the sound of scampering feet from behind her, and a familiar voice calling “Trillian!” She was so startled that she spun around to face Zaphod, standing in the light for the first time in weeks.

       Now that Zaphod had prevented Trillian from doing what he didn’t want her to do, he simply stared at her, unsure of what to do next. It became clear to him that unless he spoke now she was going to go ahead and do that very thing anyway. He’d better say something convincing. One of his mouths fell slackly open, its corresponding head nearly passing out with the effort of trying to think of something to say. The pair of eyes that belonged to the other head zeroed in on the tears drying on Trillian’s face.

         “Hey, baby,” Zaphod said weakly, trying to disguise his relief that Trillian hadn’t done the thing that he suddenly couldn’t bear to think of her doing. He imbued his voice with as much sincerity as he could manage- in fact, more sincerity than he had ever used in his life. “If you come with me I’ll show you a really wild sight. Better than old Allosimanius Syneca.”

       Trillian thought for a few seconds, and then inclined her head forward and came up to Zaphod. At least he was talking now, and seemed interested in his surroundings. She didn’t want to hope for too much.

       Zaphod led Trillian up to the bridge of the _Heart of Gold,_ where he sat down at the computer and whispered coordinates to it while Trillian looked on in silence. Soon the starship had whisked the _Heart of Gold’s_ crew of two away, out of the lonely depths of space and towards a small planet that appeared to be covered entirely in blue water.

       If either of them had looked up the planet in the Guide, this is what it would have said:

_Out of all the peculiarities of the Galaxy, there is arguably none so lovely as the identical blue sky and blue sea of the planet Agua, a place where there are no landmasses whatsoever and all of the inhabitants are fish. Some travelers have been driven mad by not being able to tell which mass of blue is the sky and which is the ocean, which casts a negative light on an otherwise enjoyable planet, but these opinions are largely ignored by most travelers, who wish to be surrounded in blue and couldn’t give a damn either way as to which is which. (This has occasionally led to a few ships crashing in Agua’s endless ocean, and presumably harming the fishy lifeforms that dwell there, but again, most people choose to ignore such incidents.)_

“I can’t believe I’ve never taken you here before,” Zaphod commented as the _Heart of Gold_ broke through Agua’s thin atmosphere. Trillian still said nothing, but she went to the window and stared out at the large, wide sky over her head, through which’s wispy clouds she could just barely make out several stars. After a few moments of letting her appreciate it by herself, Zaphod got up and went to join Trillian at her side.

         _You look at me and you weep for the free blue sky_

_I look to the stars as they flicker and float in your eyes_

It didn’t take long before Trillian was weeping again, but this time she somehow didn’t mind it as much. She could do with tears for once in her life. When Zaphod noticed her reaction, he was spooked and wondered what he could have possibly done wrong. “Are you all right, baby?” he asked in a voice that did not quite fail to betray his worry. “You okay, Trillian?”

       “The sky is beautiful,” Trillian said calmly, wrapping her arms around herself.

         “It’s surprising,” said Zaphod, “that you could tell which was the sky and which was the sea. Most of the time I can’t. But that’s nothing I bother worrying about.” He grinned at the window with one head- the other one was watching Trillian. “I’ve been to this planet plenty of times and haven’t crashed in the ocean once!”

         Taking a look at Trillian’s current position, Zaphod decided that she would be better off with one of his arms around herself instead of one of her own, and so let one of his right arms creep over until it was slung across Trillian’s shoulders. Trillian didn’t move away or tell Zaphod to get lost, so he began to hope that all was forgiven.

         Slowly, Zaphod moved his other right arm so that it was clasping Trillian by the waist, and then deftly maneuvered her close enough towards him that his left arm could reach out and join the right arm around her waist as well. Trillian turned towards Zaphod, and in her eyes he saw the flickering stars above their heads reflected and magnified. It was a beautiful sight that would have warmed any sentimental soul. Zaphod, however, lacked such a soul, and for that matter a sentimental, poetic tongue, but even still he tried his best to dispense of his ego and put to words the feelings he was feeling at the moment, speak the words that would secure Trillian in his triplet of arms for as long as he still felt the way he did now.

         “Trillian…” Zaphod began, and then changed his mind. “Tricia…” Trillian looked up at Zaphod in surprise. It had been years since he had addressed her using her Earth name. She’d thought he had forgotten it.

         “I…” Zaphod said, and suddenly wondered why his tongue had unexpectedly turned to concrete, just when he needed to say something important. The head on his right side gulped and refused to speak for stage fright, and the head on his left stared impassively down at Trillian while waiting for the other head to say something. This was ridiculous. Zaphod had never in his life gotten tongue-tied talking to a girl, least of all Trillian, and he had never lost his confidence before. There was always plenty of that to go around. So why was it so hard for him to speak to Trillian all of a sudden?

         _And underneath these wings of steel, the small town dies._

Trillian was at once inexplicably reminded in that moment of the night Zaphod had taken her away from the insufferable bore of a dinner party, and later from the planet itself. She remembered the feeling of soaring above the town she once lived in, thrilled with the idea of flying higher into the night sky. She wondered if Zaphod was remembering the moment as well.

        “I’m sorry, baby,” both of Zaphod’s heads suddenly spat out at once. “I was depressed for a bit is all. You know how it is. Actually, you probably don’t. Whatever. I’m sure Marvin does. I did some soul-searching-“ He shuddered. “Never doing _that_ again. And I said some things I know I didn’t mean. Trillian, I love you, and I’d like to continue my travels across the universe in search of excitement and adventure and really wild things with you.” Zaphod almost rounded out his speech with the insecure statement “if you still want to go,” before remembering who he was and who Trillian was and what the probability was that things would work out in his favor. He turned the force of dual face-splitting grins on her.

       Trillian stared into Zaphod’s overly confident faces, and felt something towards him other than pity stir up inside of her for the first time in weeks. Yes, Zaphod was unpredictable; yes, he drank too much and yes, he could be a bit of a bastard at times. But despite all that, Trillian still deeply cared about him, still even loved him, if she dared to admit it. Besides, who else would be able to keep such a madman in check?

         With one breath, Trillian repeated the first words she had ever said to Zaphod, all those years ago on Earth, just before he had taken her hands and led her off to his waiting starship. “I’d love to come with you.” She threw her arms around his necks and kissed first one pair of lips and then the other, before holding Zaphod the way he was holding her and hoping that the moment would last longer than Zaphod would usually allow. As always, Trillian got her way.

         _Who’d have ever thought of it?_

_Who’d have ever dreamed_

_That a small-town girl like you_

_Would be the boss of me?_

**Author's Note:**

> I got this fic idea when I was reading Life, the Universe, and Everything for the first time, while simultaneously humming a David Bowie song to myself. As I read the part where Trillian leaves Zaphod to go down to Krikkit, I started thinking of the lyrics and how certain lines reminded me of their strange relationship. I think their emotions are understated in the books, and I wanted to explore their true feelings for each other. I don’t think this story affects the timeline very much- the Krikkit robots would have ended up in the Heart of Gold anyway and probably still succeeded in taking the Improbability Drive, only capturing two prisoners instead of one. Although I’m not sure how Trillian would have managed to avoid conflict and speak with Hactar if she were a prisoner with Zaphod… To me, such things don’t matter in this fanfiction, as long as Zaphod and Trillian were in a better place in their relationship. ;) I’m sorry that they act slightly out of character, and for the weird idea with the uncreatively-named Planet Agua. I tried.


End file.
